Architects of Piety: The Cappadocian Fathers and the Cult of the Martyrs. By VASILIKI M. LIMBERIS.

Abstract

InArchitects of Piety, Vasiliki Limberis seeks to demonstrate ‘the gripping, dynamic, pervasively central role martyr piety had in the Christianity of the Cappadocian Fathers’ (p. 7). In four chapters, bookended with a brief introduction and shorter conclusion, Limberis ‘layers’ her discussion of the Cappadocian martyr-saint cult through the themes of experience, ekphrasis, kinship, and gender. While she succeeds in providing vivid and coherent illustrations of Cappadocian piety and attention to the imagined construction of architectural space in building the cult of the saints, the book is plagued by infelicities that may limit its usefulness as a scholarly reference. Chapter 1 examines the transformative nature of the cultic panegyris to ‘enact’ a ritual experience of sanctity. Drawing on homiletic comments, Limberis illustrates the importance that Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa placed on various martyrs and their local shrines, and their appeal to authoritative piety. A calendar of 23 festivals for saints probably celebrated in Cappadocia (p. 42) accompanies a brief account of martyrs ‘local and regional, military, invented, biblical and apostolic, and finally ancestral’ (p. 41). Nyssen’s Life of Gregory Thaumaturgus and Nazianzen’s homily on Cyprian serve as examples that the Cappadocians at least sometimes ‘simply invented the heroic deeds of the saint wholesale’ to advance claims about liturgy, Scripture, and doctrine, ‘able to discard historical perspective in favor of ideological strength’ (p. 51).